Understanding and Addressing Pain and Childhood Wounds

patterns are Pain's way of grabbing for our attention pain is not out to get us it's not out to destroy us it's not out to ruin our lives pain just wants to be acknowledged it just wants to be honored it would like for us to just turn our heads back around for a moment right to be with it to witness it to grieve along side of it so that we can actually make a pivot in our lives and move in the direction of the relationships and the life that we really want to live hey everyone before diving into the episode I want to take a moment to invite you into our mindbody green ecosystem where you can explore the infinite possibilities of health and well-being all you have to do is click the Subscribe button to hear more thought-provoking interviews with leaders in the health space I am so grateful for all of you who have tuned in over the years and let me tell you it's only going to get better you say our childhood wounds are playing out right now no matter how fantastic how average or in some cases how terrible our childhood was can we talk more about that yeah and and maybe not right now and in every moment but certainly in The Unwanted patterns that we can't shake and change and shift in our lives today and I think most people can probably raise their hands and say yep there are some unwanted patterns that I notice that no matter how much I commit to it no matter how much I promise myself that I'm not going to do that thing again I'm not going to keep pursuing emotionally unavailable people I promise I'm never going to engage in this conflict in this way ever again because I don't like who I am when I do it or I'm going to set this boundary you know with my partners parents or whatever it is but we cannot do it right it's like that to me is where there's an arrow that points to your resolution from the past when we can make changes fantastic right if you're like I can change this thing about myself and I implement it and you do great but when you find yourself back in that thing over and over and over again that's where we want to really inquire deeply uh and see what is unresolved from our past that's calling for our attention so you mentioned pursuing emotionally unavailable people is that a fairly common one it can be yes what what's what's the driver for that specifically oh it could be a number of different things um it's not so much about being attracted to someone who is emotionally unavailable it's about the pursuit and I remember when I distinguished this uh in maybe it was an Instagram re or something and I remember how many people were like wow that actually shifts and reframes it for me because this idea we we could be attracted to lots of people for lots of different things but it's this pursuit of I know that you are not available to me and I'm going to see if I can what convince you otherwise I'm going to see if I am good enough for this to for it to change your mind right and so a lot of times there's um sort of a worthiness wound that can play into the pursuit of going after someone who's unavailable um this idea you know a lot of people will say if you go after somebody who's unavailable it means that you're unavailable and that can be true H it certainly can be the case but some that was me 25 years ago right right it's like definitely valid point um but it can also be us feeling like we are you know undeserving of something that that's a part of the narrative that is just underlying it always and what we know is that if I'm going to pursue this person I am going to continue to feel that way because I'm not going to be able to convince them otherwise I know that they're disconnected from self or relationship and they don't want want anything but I'm going to go after someone who's not available and it's going to keep this narrative steady for me and so there can be this worthiness element that that plays in that we keep uh yeah we sort of keep uh repeating um I think sometimes we can experience this space where it's like if you just get to know me then I'm going to be able to convince you otherwise right and so sometimes people will will enter into that space hoping that with some time and if we yeah if we spend more time together and you get to see how great I am I'm going to be able to change your mind right and so there's always this changing of the Mind element piece to it that can present and I think it's looking at like well who have you always wanted to change right like where where have you looked to before what's familiar about this where you're like wanting somebody's opinion or experience of you or the way that they relate to you to be different and maybe we might find some of that in childhood for example maybe we have a relationship with a parent or a sibling or another adult in our lives where they're disconnected from us we can't get the attention that we want from them we can't get the connection that we want from them we can't get their validation or you know intimacy from them in the way that we seek and yeah whether they're prioritizing other things they're busy they're just checked out for whatever reason but we're constantly in this Loop trying to be the star athlete or get the Straight A's or be quote unquote perfect so that we get the thing that we want from them and do we continue to chase that you know in our adult lives and you know romantic relationships or even friendships sometimes there's a lot to unpack there I think about performance culture you mentioned the straight A is the uh the star athlete I think of Dr Dr Lisa Miller's work around children in high earning very well-educated cities where there are studies to show that these kids in households where parents have significant resources kids go to the best schools are more likely to have anxiety or be depressed than kids who are in extreme like I was say poverty but like who who are far from well off where maybe parents are having difficult like those kids are happier and to me that's a big wow on one hand you have parents who are very involved educated resources producing children that are unhappy on the other hand you've got kids in the other side you know the wrong side of the tracks if you will uh who don't have those resources who don't have the education and those kids are happier than these kids and a lot lot of it's how the parents interact and the expectations instead of how you know how are you feeling it's how do you do on that math test right how are you yeah what are you doing right how are you performing and yeah right that like the level of stress and pressure which you know tends to move kids out of being kids and you know getting to be playful and you know getting to exist in a low pressure space and that doesn't mean that they don't have wonderful outcomes of being smart hardworking individuals right but this idea that the thing that is most important to me as your parent is how you do in the world as opposed to who you are right and it's not to say that the parents on the other side of the tracks as you put it are necessarily inquiring about that but I think that that's so important like who are you and how are you right versus what are you doing essentially to make me happy less ashamed less embarrassed right because if you as child is a reflection of me is an extension of me holds some type of image of me right to my friends to my other family members to society to the world around me right if that's the thing that's most important is protecting the parents image then we understand how disconnected they're going to be from their children and their their child's internal experience right I think for a child then because performance is often tied to you know what I call worthiness wound this idea that I am only worthy right of H attachment connection love validation affirmation your presence peace in our family right if I am performing in the way that you need me to I get those things when I'm doing that I don't get those things love connection intimacy Etc right when I'm not doing those things right and so when we are in this performance space where we learn that the only way to get the things that we crave and desire and need as kiddos is to perform in the way that the adults in our lives require us to right it's we can see how easy it might be to either repeat that pattern or sometimes we take a path of opposition where we're like screw it I don't want to have anything to do with this because I can't stand this and then maybe we're a little bit um you know defiant in the other direction but it's a yeah it's a kids need to know that they're worthy just by being I want to come back to kids we'll park that and come back say I want to make sure we spend some time on in my view like the foundation of of your book which is excellent these these these core wounds so can you walk us through the five five core wounds what they are how they show up and ultimately how we can kind of start to do the work to move through them yeah so when I sat down to write the origins of you I was jotting down like all the different wounds that I thought that every human could possibly have and ultimately at the end of the day I felt felt that these five and and the the words that I chose right the language that I chose really Encompass The Human Experience don't think that we fit into boxes if a different word works for you as a listener beautiful go with that um but the five that really stood out to me were worthiness belonging prioritization safety and Trust meaning that through our lives in our experience right we tend to have ruptures in our sense of worthiness in a sense of belonging being a part of something in our sense of feeling like a priority in our sense of being able to trust the important people around us and the world around us um sometimes even being able to trust ourselves and then of course safety right am I safe am I secure um is my well-being being looked after right am I taking care of here and yeah the ruptures in that are things that we tend to find um happen in family of origin right in the family systems that we grow up in doesn't all happen there um in me kind of going through this I want to name how many people are like I think I have all five so if you're like resonating with many of these right now that's okay that's normal um but yeah sometimes a primary one is going to stand out where you're like wow I really do struggle with this I think at one time in our lives we've probably experienced all of these things I think that the question becomes is what what shows up all the time like what's the consistent theme versus you know at one time I wasn't really feeling worthy or I couldn't find my tribe yeah no no no and this isn't about just sort of like a light scrape right this is about something that's internalized for us cuz we all of us have you know we can go through hard things and not every hard thing that we go through is going to stick with us and and change the trajectory of our lives right sometimes though hard things right and ruptures do do that and that's what's important for us to understand is like what in my story what in my experience things that have either happened to me or things that I have observed because not everything happens to us that impacts us right sometimes it's something that we see in our parents' relationship or something that happened to our sibling that has a deep impact on us that we're looking out for as well right and so that's our job is to understand where there's a significant rupture in these things we don't have to make something out of nothing but we do have to name and acknowledge where there is unresolved pain in our lives so of those five which do you believe is the most common worthiness for sure I mean when I was writing about worthiness and like I am pretty sure every human on the planet probably rubs up against a worthiness wound at some point or another again to what degree is it something that holds you know the the reins in their lives okay that's we can argue right but it's like I think I've done a I created a not this isn't scientific right but I created a a quiz what's your primary origin wound and and I think you know over 70% of people came back with the worthiness wound right so know that that's one that is so common absolutely need to link to that in the show notes so everyone listening can take the quiz what within the family system promote unworthiness give us some examples yeah so okay so one of the things that we started with already right is this need for performance so the Pleasers the perfectionists the performers out there right hands up those are a lot of the people who are going to struggle with a worthiness wound and it's what I was saying before right this idea that my line for connection closeness intimacy attachment validation affirmation peace Etc right is tied to my ability to perform it's tied to my ability to please you it's tied to my ability to present in whatever way you need me to in order to get the outcome that I'm looking for so a lot of times we're going to see a worthiness wound develop because of that in the environment we can see a worthiness wound develop because of statements of harm and of course that's also tied to safety because we might be talking about abuse if we're talking about statements of harm but sometimes unfortunately we grow up in a family where we're told that we're worthless that we're told that we're not good that we're told that we're not deserving of anything that might feel extreme for some people but it's absolutely valid that you know so many of us have heard those words or a version of them before that strips it away from us right that strips our worth and our value as a human being down I quick Story one of the things that you know Str ruptured a little bit of worthiness For Me In conflict with my father the way that he would punish me was um by giving me the silent treatment and what would happen is when I was a quote unquote good girl he was super helpful super present super available really like happy to do anything for me but when I stepped out of that and you know when I say that it was really within reason I was a objectively you know good kid but when I was whatever defined in some way I didn't agree with him or you know wasn't you know able to he couldn't control me in a particular moment the way that I was punished was through silent treatment for sometimes you know days and weeks even on end and it was one of those things where I learned right like my worth like if I stay quiet if I am a agreeable if I am fine if I don't push back on things if I don't have boundaries right then I get connection and closeness and support and help but when I'm not doing those things if I have a boundary if I have a thought that is different than yours and you don't like it right then I'm going to be punished and all of that's going to be withheld from me right so that's another example right is like ooh I am worthy of closeness and connection and support and help when I fit in this box but when I don't fit in this box then it gets taken and withheld withdrawn so anecdotally I definitely know some people who have similar stories and H have done the work and kind of recognize this well former blind spot and then there are some people I know who are extraordinarily performan driven have expectations for themselves that are Beyond you know know ridiculous uh but they're just kind of hardwired that way they're extraordinarily competitive like there was there was as far as I know nothing traumatic in that sense in their childhood they were just kind of born hardwired very competitive very hard on themselves like expect excellence and that's just kind of who they who they are uh is that possible in your view yeah I mean I think I I love Excellence too and I love to compete as well and I think um you know there's a quote that a colleague of mine says which is that our gifts and our pain and wounds are oftentimes Nextdoor neighbors and you know the way that we learn to survive something often is in this really glistening and glimmering way and I think sometimes this idea and you know can we be born competitive like sure we certainly make an argument for that and obviously nature versus nurture etc etc but you know it's important for us I think to inquire right it's like if that's not there who am I if I'm not pushing my right like who am I without it is there something there or is there nothing there so if unworth that that makes sense and I'm curious if unworthiness is the one that's the most common what's the the most problematic yeah I don't know that you can rank that because I think the way that it's internalize and takes over any individual's life is is infinite right and it's and I think what I and it's something that I call in the book I call it wound comparison I think sometimes when we hierarchically are putting something like which one is the worst and who has it the worst to me that becomes a distraction actually a away from our own experience we can look at so many people's lives and objectively say holy smokes that person has been through it that is a story right but if that then means my story is not as bad as your story then what happens is it moves me away from honoring and acknowledging the way that my exp experience has taken up space and room in my life so if we take out the outlaw s if you will the people who've had extreme trauma which you would hear a story and you would just winse like painful we take the outliers out and we go back to like maybe the the Middle where every living human beings experiened this the average in your view what separates the average from having issues that become obstacles in their ability to thrive as happy healthy human beings and those who have the same issues and they're all good I think to me it's about the resolution right for most of us and there might be some people listening who are like I really had a great go and there's nothing really that stands out and certainly there are cases where it is possible to have fantastic parents and you know to not have you know significant ruptures in your life so we can put those people aside but I think the the Difference Maker is those of us who are willing to look versus those of us who are not and I think that's what I'm you know what I was saying at the beginning is yeah if you have unwanted patterns right if you're like H this thing that I keep doing or I keep finding myself in to me that lets me know that we haven't resolved what needs to be resolved does not mean that our past has to dictate our lives forever right it's that when most when when we are willing to acknowledge our pain when we are willing to actually spend a little bit of time with our story we don't have to hang out there forever right we don't have to go into the past and keep right but it's like if we're willing to acknowledge and honor the story then it loosens its grip on us I always think Pain's not out to destroy our lives it's not out to get us it's not cynically rubbing its hands together saying haaha let's see where I can destroy your life right it's like it's it wants to have us turn back around to it right because this idea that like when we're kids when we're teenagers we don't have great tools we survive our way through stuff we cope through whatever it is that's happening around us right we get to the other side congratulations we've survived it great but then this idea of like I'm going to go back there and we don't tend to do that and yet we still had the experience it still imprinted something upon us right and what I would say is that it might be dictating or directing parts of our Lives the way that we communicate the way that we navigate through conflict the ways that we do or do not set boundaries sometimes having too high of boundaries and not allowing people to get close to us or get connected to us right and those are the things that we have to look at so the difference right between the average the middle folks right who all went through similarish stuff it all kind of gets internalized in different ways but some people are doing better than others is that we're looking and naming and addressing and and touching the stuff from our past that has a grip on us you know where I go with this I agree with what you said is also mindset in my view there's a big difference between saying I think there's a process at least with me there there's a process where sometimes I will say you know why did this happen to me but then I will quickly segue to what can I learn from this versus some people just get stuck in why did this happen to me and then that becomes your story and we all have our stories everyone's got their story the reality I I think the the the real skill and it's a lifelong journey for myself and I think many listeners is like trying to create space sometimes from you and your journey and you and your story so to speak and and be self-aware and sometimes that's difficult to do yeah I agree with you 100% I think that curiosity is such an important tool and when we stay stuck in yeah whether it's a version of why did this happen to me or I can't believe this happened to me or I'm so unlucky um when we get trapped in in a victim position and what I mean by that is not that we cannot be victims of course there are things that do happen to us we are victims of many things but when we get stuck there it's so hard to heal from that place right if we're clinging to a story right if we are holding on to it if we I we almost over identify with the story right then it's very hard to make any type of movement right so when you're talking about mindset absolutely right it's like there's got to be a space where we can inquire and get really curious about what can grow from this so to to segue off of this I'll provide something at least I find humorous one of my favorite on television was justified with the great actor Timothy elephant and there was a fantastic line which I've used before in this show he says if you run into an [ __ ] in the morning you run into an [ __ ] if you run into [ __ ] all day you're the [ __ ] to me that kind of says it all so something else I thought was was really interesting birth order what do we need to know about birth order and I know you know there's some generalizations to be made but you know are there commonalities for the oldest youngest middle only only child uh what can you tell us about birth order as I think about my two children and how their personalities are so different and I'm sure they anyone listening as a sibling or as children is thinking of the same thing and what about you where where are you in the are you an only child or you have siblings I'm yeah raised only yeah yeah okay so I'm an only child too um and it's a very unique uh there's not as many of us I guess I don't mean as many uh only children uh unique experience at times there are definitely commonalities that we can see I'm a parent as well um and so I I even think about like oh my gosh the first time becoming a parent and how you do things and how you relate to your child and what you know how to do and what you don't know how to do and how careful you might be versus you know another one coming in you're like I've been there done that and like where are we focusing I remember someone saying like I have like 7,000 photos of my first child and like three of my third you know and you're like right you sort of forget oh look this is the novelty of this and and and what's going on here and I what I maybe will point to is that I find it fascinating to understand what's happening in parents lives based on when that child is entering and so yeah we could sit here and say okay the does the first one have it hardest they're having to like crack through all the things and you know is the middle one the Forgotten one because we care about the first one and then the baby but the middle one is just kind of lost in the mix right like we we could chat all about that but I I I think there's something really fascinating and interesting about what is happening in the lives of the parents based on when children are entering and children are moving through and important moments in their lives because what we know for certain is like sure you know we both had the same parents right we all had the same parents and yet we all have or I I shouldn't say this all of the time but so many people I talk to is that we have very different experiences of these same adults right I have a very different take on my parents than my sibling does the way that my sibling would tell a story about my parents is very different the way that I would tell story about them and that piece to me is so interesting and fascinating because it shapes so much of the way that children internalize uh their experiences how much they're cared for how much a parent or parents prioritize them um what the focus is you know maybe if you had a young parent uh as the first child but then the third or fourth child has a more mature emotionally mature evolved parent because it's been 10 years time right it's like they're getting totally different experiences I think for parents listening one of the questions that I often ask people is to think about your child however old they are but let's say that their kiddo is smaller right now um and so like 15 20 years from now on their therapist's couch and when the therapist asks them tell me about your parents right what like what was like for you growing up um what's the good the the bad the not so good you know what are they going to say about you what right like what is the story that they carry and hold about their experience with you as their parent and if you like that answer great but if that answer is really confronting for you right it's like to me that's an very interesting inquiry I like that because it kind of zooms out to the big picture and for me personally as a parent sometimes when we start to talk about trauma and parenting I I will sit here and say oh God I did that one really wrong you know lost my temp you know and it's just like I think as parents you can you can be hard on yourselves but I think the reality is most parents are doing the best they can and are pretty darn good but I think when you start to talk about you know I think the world and and this is overall positive thing I think a decade ago we talked about trauma it was just big tea now we all know there little te little te is everywhere but like you can't escape it and I I just want to be clear to parents listening like none of us are perfect like it's long as as long as you're trying you love your kid you do the basics like you're doing fine because I think with a lot of parents you start to go down this rabbit hole and you're like oh God I'm I'm doing terrible what am you know no and that's it's it's the zoom out like you said right because it's it cannot be these micro moments of course I'm the big believer like apologize take accountability take ownership like that is one of the best things that you can do as a parent but you have to zoom out and say the experience what's what's the story right because they're not going to talk to their therapist for you know 80 hours about how you were as a parent they're going to give a paragraph they're going to give a number of sentences about who you were where you showed up where you didn't and that's it's like that zoom out of overall what's the takeaway what will they say and that's the piece because it's the repetition that's why people say things right they're not gonna be like oh this one moment when you know you promised me ice cream but then we were late and we couldn't get ice cream you know like that's likely I mean maybe for somebody but likely not going to be the standout moment and the tell all so yes you cannot zoom in on these micro moments I love this and I want to close the loop on here with for our parents listening you know what are the big picture things we should focus on is one of them if I'm hearing you correctly like if you feel like you've maybe lost your temper apologize just like sorry I lost my it's a big it's GNA happen at least for me it's GNA happen but I say you know what I'm I'm sorry like I'm really sorry I lost my cool I shouldn't have done that you know that's one thing I'm getting for you like what are other things like for parents to like focus on other than like you know loving your child like being being there tell us what else hopefully you love your child hopefully you want to be there hopefully you want to show up for them right like let's let's have that as as beneath the bar but yeah exactly what I said before about apologize naming things right A lot of times what happens is shame or embarrassment or guilt comes in and when we do that most of us as humans we like to get away from that right we don't love the feeling of shame and embarrassment it sucks it doesn't feel good for us and so what happens is we hide right and so this idea of holding ourselves up high enough right to say I can make a mistake I can be human I can be flawed I can be imperfect right I just had an imperfect moment of course I did but that doesn't mean that I have to exist in my shame right because if I have to protect myself it means that I can't honor your experience if I have to protect myself I can't honor your experience I can't name what just happened because I'm I'm safeguarding me and as parents you know as the adults in the relationship I think it's so important for us to be able to work to a place really get to that emotional maturity where I don't need to safeguard myself I need to honor what just happened so yes the apology the ownership the accountabil accountability is beautiful parents say like you know what should I be doing right it's like your work is to continue to resolve that which is unresolved I know I keep saying it here but it's like the more that you do that right the more growth and expansion and healing that happens because we know that that your resolution from generation to generation does get past down right and so it's like what you don't resolve your CH children will have to face right what you don't resolve your children will have to face on that note what we don't resolve our partners and relationships are going to have to face so so let's go there like what what do you like where where should we start with relationships and and our experience It's Tricky right because it's like here's two people who are coming together who have complexity to them who have full stories right who have who grew up in family systems that may or may not have looked similar to one another right who have different storylines who have maybe different wounds or maybe some of the same wounds um but ultimately right like when we're in a relationship when there's an activation or trigger conflict or breakdown in communication what's happening is me as the individual is trying to protect something for myself right and same thing for the other side right and so when we go into that space where there's disconnect or rupture and relationships right it's like each person is safeguarding in the way that they know how sometimes that's learned behavior sometimes it's adaptive right it's like how did I need to protect myself growing up how do I need to protect myself in past relationships how do I need to protect myself here and you know a lot of times it's this race to needing to be right or needing to prove our point or just needing to protect ourselves right instead of racing to repair or hear the other person I'll share a quick story just because I think it helps synthesize this before I was married I was dating well spoiler alert we did get married so you'll know that this conflict didn't ruin everything but we got into a conflict while we were dating and I just kept doubling down tripling down I have no idea what we were fighting about but I remember myself like just needing to prove my point over and over and over again and Connor's like I got it I understand and I kept going and I kept going and I kept going I had this out of- body moment where I'm like Vienna stop talking but I couldn't I just kept and finally it stopped and I remember this sort of the shame spiral coming on like like this was not very attractive and I I wonder if he's going to want to be with me anymore yeah and then I replaced the shame with curiosity quickly what does being right serve what does proving my point serve and I think this is a really important tool for anybody who's listening right is to ask what the behavior is serving because even though it might be dysfunctional or disconnected in the moment our behaviors in context make sense it's very important for us to remember you make sense with context your partner makes sense with context we all make sense with context context is not an excuse but it helps us make sense of things and so our behaviors our unwanted behaviors that were like oh I can't stand that I do this is protecting something it's serving something and your job is to understand and figure out what that is so when I inquired like why like what what is this all about brought me back to my childhood as you know already I'm an only child my parents went through a nine-year divorce process nine nine year longest in the state of New Jersey at the time um talk about competitive and I watched a lot of manipulation a lot of gaslighting a lot of paranoia a lot of psychological abuse it was awful and as a little human in this system sort of observing what I saw was you know dominance power and control came from my dad who was very manipulative was a master gaslighter and my mom was in this weak position based on my perspective she was confused she was couldn't track what was going on and to me there was a weakness there it was very clear that safety wasn't being right right he was quick with his words he could always make himself right and not being right was unsafe and that perspective was so informative to me because I could have compassion for myself instead of just criticism and blame for like oh this was so gross I can't believe you behave this way it's so unattractive you can't show up in the world that way to oh I wow like of course you want to be right and need to prove your point because it is connected to your safety based on your life experience and now of course I can't just say I connected the dots and so here it it right like I cannot go around behaving that way for the rest of my life there has to be a shift that takes place but to understand what that behavior was serving offered a compassionate lens it gave I gave myself Grace and then it was this invitation to work with that part differently because yeah I I cannot do that in my partnership it's not going to work out very well it's not going to last if I keep doing that but I also have to have compassion and understanding for this part of my story that developed this Behavior to protect myself from something that did need protecting way back when wow so for a relationship to be successful there there there's a lot that goes into that and in my very unprofessional view I think it requires work and there needs to be growth but I also think in my oversimplification that like the biggest secret is picking the right person because if you pick the wrong person the amount of work acquired is possibly unsurmountable and that's so much of failed relationships comes down to like selection what's your I'm not the professional no but I think you're you're right like there is so much to understand and unpack in individuals and in relationships and you know when you get together and you make a choice you know the closer the more intimate the more you understand about each other at that point right I think to to your point is like yeah it's going to be hard there's always going to be work there's going to be challenges you're going to face a lot of things throughout your relationship together incredible stages of life incredible moments of grief right but it's right it's like this idea you know the way that I described it I I felt with my husband that I believed that we could face anything together so on that note and again my professional overs simplistic view I believe and I I've said this in years to to friends when there are like big problems in the early stages of relationships when there's no mortgage there's no kids there's no illness and like you're serious issues and like you're in therapy on week three my overs simplistic view has been like dude it's the wrong relationship like everything's okay right now to your point like life is going to be a lot more complicated and if you're having problems now like that's a that what's your what's your take on my oversimplification and potentially bad advice to friends decades ago no not I mean not necessarily right like I think yeah like if if there is high conflict there's so there's so much that's just always an issue right right from the get-go like likely that's going to continue right and I don't want to say all right because I think that there's people who have gone through hard stuff in the beginning of a relationship who have found their way through it right but I think this idea it's like when we choose Partnerships and and I mean not just like dating people for a few dates yeah there's that too um yeah right it's like when we have actually chosen a partnership um my take is that we have similar levels of your resolution we don't tend to choose people and partner with them again not go on a few dates with them but actually choose them and partner with them and have wildly different levels of your resolution now your stories might be entirely different somebody objectively might have a story that is the like oof the wincing like you said before and the other person might not have that story but a levels of your resolution why we choose each other right is we're still looking to resolve something there and I and so you know to your point right is couples who are willing and interested and curious and open about that work of resolving things through the dynamic right are going to do a little bit better than people who are like you just suck right or this is all you or I don't have anything you've got it all or whatever it is right it's like or they're not interested in inquiring within or being self-reflective or they don't care about it or they're shut down from it it's very hard to make any type of movement and growth and change from that place and so this I don't care how unresolved you are I care how much you are open and interested in that work of resolution and knowing that so much of that comes through relationship our pain and our wounds that is at the hands of relationships so our healing a resolution is at the hands of relationships there's only so much that we can do in the vacuum of the individual right it's like our we know relationships hold up mirrors we know our partners do we know our children do right it's like that is where it's going to reflect the things back to us and I think you know the couples who do the best are the ones who are open to the exploration of self-inquiry and relational inquiry they're open they are reflective they are self and relationally aware and they can see their part and their partner can see their part and we're interested and committed to continuing to resolve and face the things that conf confront us so if those who are curious and committed and have learned to become effective communicators it sounds like those are the most common traits in couples that end up staying together and and having healthy happy relationships it is is it as simple as those who do not display those common traits end up being the couples that get divorced or is there more to the the failed the failed the qualities that that end relationships I mean there's a lot you know that that can go into the ending of a relationship but I do think what we're saying here in terms of like what allows people to get through hard things together life is hard and you know if it's not hard yet and I don't mean this to be Doom and Gloom but the reality of it is is that we Face loss and we Face grief and we fa you know we Face massive transitions throughout life we're going to get there at some point if you haven't had to walk that bridge yet and I think you know attachment when we think about it parent child is being able to move through hard things together and know that we're going to get to the other side it's the same relationally in Partnership right so this idea if you think like life is supposed to be just light and fun and easy and there's never going to be the heart right like that I think you know that expectation of it should just be this way versus this is what life is looking like right now and I trust and know that's why I said when I knew with my husband is like I know that we can face hard things together I'll go in a foxhole with him yes and that to me is one of the most important is not there will not be hard things or we have to avoid hard things it's that when the hard things present I know and trust that we will move through them together there's a lot that can end relationships right um and probably don't have enough time to get into you know all the different things that could happen there just to spend a moment you know I think communication is is a big one in having talk to a lot of experts like communication can erode quickly you know an example I I'll give an example of you know I think years ago you I would hear the the CL cliche advice you know never go to bed angry and I that's like terrible advice because if you're having conflict with your partner you are not going to bed yeah well do we really want to escalate this and go to 3 in the morning or 4 in the morning or or when emotions are running high like continue for them to to run high it's like no go to bed angry wake up and in my personal experience you always wake up in a much better space clearer head and like kind of resolves and oh that was that was [ __ ] that was silly my take is a lot it's never really the big thing that you know maybe the movies it's the little stuff yeah relationship killer resentment and how do we get to resentment oftentimes a lack of communication a lack of addressing some of the smaller hard things that are presenting um a lack of gratitude appreciation acknowledgement in the relationship resentment is a killer it's awful it's terrible how do we watch out for that well I think part of communication you know this there is um a term low negativity threshold I don't know if you've heard it before no I haven't lnt yeah right uh and this idea sometimes people like you know don't make a mountain out of a molehill don't you know we only we pick and choose our battles and really what we see is that um those whose threshold is lower meaning I the amount of negativity or that I am willing to tolerate before I say something about it is really low okay very helpful and that's not like oh let's nag and you know be irritated andno I don't like the blue shirt that you have on I think you should have chosen a different blue right um it's right like when something is upsetting to me I don't hold it I don't let it store in my body I I share it and we don't have to make a huge to-do about it but we are able to express it and name it and have it essentially be resolved in that moment and when we have Partners who can say oh yeah okay I hear that sorry I really didn't I didn't mean for that to come out that way or um yeah I totally get why you experienced that way I'm sorry and a kiss on the forehead and we move on from it right it's like that's you're right it's not sometimes the big stuff can be a significant rupture in the relationship but most of the time right these little things these little digs these little strips that happen repeatedly over time that get us to a place of resentment and disconnection and sometimes we cross a threshold where we are so resentful and so disconnected that it is so hard to try to come back from that and so this idea of bringing down your threshold from for what you're willing to tolerate you don't need to you know pound your chest and be proud I can tolerate so much is not something to be excited about don't walk around like that right and for many of us we had to learn how to tolerate a lot in our lives right in order to survive in order to get through something right so for people who have historically had to tolerate a lot in order to get by you really want to look out for this but this idea of Shifting especially in our interpersonal relationships to a place where we are not tolerating much right that's not meaning invitation for like blowout conflicts right but just a okay I need to share this with you oh I hear you yeah let's move it along right like I acknowledge yes yes yes and then we go like that is so so so important to help us to stay away from resentment and disconnection sound advice and you can very easily see how that can build over time and then lead to explosion yeah and so what what do you make you know I've seen this happen to to people I know where all of a sudden it's you know we're getting separated or we're getting divorced you know we grew apart we're friends but you know we just grew apart what do you and again hard to generalize but what's your take on the we grew apart scenario yeah you know a few things right like the growing apart sometimes is the micro things that happen over and over and over again for a long period of time I think a lot of times I'll hear one person in the partnership who wants to keep growing who wants to do introspective work who wants to do healing work and the other person doesn't want to do that and so this idea of really growing apart is is is legitimate right this like one person is growing and wanting to change things and evolve and the other person sort of has the little horse blinders on and doesn't want to have those conversations or go there or explore that and so sometimes we you know depending on when we meet you know we we change as human beings right if you get together when you're 20 or you're 30 and then who you are at 50 60 right it's like it's different let's talk about that how much does age play a role I know there's statistics about this but I want your view on success in a relationship I think emotional maturity is you know the hope is that as we age although we know for certain that this is not correlated that you do not necessarily become wiser just because the number gets higher right so we know that that is not correlated and yet that's our goal right is our hope is um I I would like to be considered an elder at some point I would like to get to a place where there is a wisdom there that I embody um where there is just a continued ution of my you know emotional maturity year in year out and so I think I point much more towards a sense of emotional maturity as opposed to necessarily an age right a number uh in a person are there questions one could ask themselves to know if they're quote unquote ready for the the real the real thing um yeah I think think there's a lot of questions uh that we could probably ask ourselves and I think like who am I how well do I Know Myself and I know those are big questions and you know we're not static individuals we are ever changing always evolving always shifting always moving but I think there's something about like that sense of self do I know my story do I have I resolved anything in my life how am I still being driven by IR resolution from the past yeah I forgot what I was listening to I know it's was a podcast but I can't remember uh whose podcast it was and who the guest was but I remember them saying like you know if somebody's coming into the relationship and they're like and obviously this is dramatic but like I'm perfect you know there's like you're going to be scared of that person but if you if somebody's coming into the relationship and they're like here's what I struggle with you know here's this thing that I know about myself that I have challenges with and I'm working on it like that's someone that we probably trust more than the person who says I'm perfect I'm great there's nothing that I do that is you know right and so there's like a need for this self- understanding and I think an interest and curiosity in the understanding of you know the person that we're going to partner with as well like I want to get to know your inner world and I want to know my inner World self awareness is like Paramount I think with everything it's Paramount and I you know maybe it feels overused at this point but the reality of it is is that like it's it's vital for us to be able to move through relationships well you know it's like your wisdom your your emotional maturity can only come from you facing the parts of yourself that you don't like the parts of yourself that have been troubling in the past right it's like where do we gain our emotional maturity from by going through the fire where do we gain our wisdom from by going through the fire you don't get to have that just because you went from 20 to 40 or 60 right you've got to face stuff right so what have you faced so other than buying the book which I will hold up everyone should buy the origins of you and taking your quiz which we will link to in the show notes what are some of the things that listeners can do right now to start becoming better people happier in in their own skin better in their relationships better human beings all around what what can we do to start to to work to do the work I think one of one great question is where in my life am I most reactive so sometimes we have to look in the corners that are a little bit trickier and harder for us so instead of like I'm just going to express more gratitude moving forward which is a nice thing I think part of that inquiry is like where are there some trick tricky things in my life and I think reactivity is uh I consider it the neon sign the arrow that points us to your resolution where we are reactive with whom we are reactive right is going to point us to something that activates us it lets us know that something internally is going on for us that needs our attention so I'd encourage everybody right now to think about where it is you're most reactive in your life and with whom and what do you know about that and what's familiar about that right and when I say familiar right it doesn't need to be like exact exact this is the sensation right what is familiar where have I experienced this before what do I know about this what is it that I don't feel prioritized in these moments is it that I don't feel good enough in these moments is it that I don't feel like I can trust in these moments right to really look for that so look for your reactivity okay look for where you can give advice but not take it yourself right oh we're so good at that right it's like where can you give advice but you cannot implement it yourself it's another really good indicator for your resolution around wounds um you know blowing things out of proportion kind of similar to reactivity but where it's like it doesn't kind of match what's happening reminder that you and your behavior make sense with context so if it doesn't match in the moment it matches to some moment even if it's not the one that just presented right um and yeah I you know one of the questions that a therapist once asked me that I continue to ask you know clients of mine to this day right is like what did you need most as a kiddo and not get and you know instead of brushing right by that question to just really sit into it to sink into it to give yourself a moment with it to really identify and acknowledge and again this isn't going on the hunt and you know I I say in the book like I really respect and honor you know parents and adults we're not here to throw anybody under the bus we're not here to you know just point blame and Sh you know any of that don't want to call hey Dad I've got a problem with you that's not what this is about but it is also very important for us to acknowledge when there's something that we needed and we didn't get and to when we can name that we can sometimes see where that pattern plays out where am I still seeking that where am I maybe still not getting that today in my relationships and yeah that's a very important question that I think that we can answer right now in this moment too fantastic advice we covered a lot today is there anything we didn't touch on that you would like to touch on or any words of wisdom you'd like to leave with our audience oh we did touch on a lot and you know there's so much more we could obviously dive into but I think you know there's um there's an exercise at the end of the book um fortunately it's not my exercise you know people who are like I wish I had written that song Or I wish I'd made that movie I'm like I wish I came up with this exercise but Michael Kerr psychotherapist um he says to think of your mother as your grandmother's daughter and see how that changes your perspective and I I love that invitation because again I will always remind people that context is is not an excuse we're never looking to make excuses for people but to remember that our parents and our partners and our neighbors and our friends and our colleagues and our bosses and whom right that everybody was a tiny human in a family system at one point and they went through complicated challenging things and we're not here to compare who story is worse and whose story is better but that yeah life is a challenge sometimes and there's cures and you know moments in there that we often know very little about and so when we can remember that each of us was a tiny human in this complicated system at some point before then I think there is a shift that can sometimes take place again that doesn't mean that we give the excuse and say oh okay well something hard happened for you so I understand why you did this thing to me but it does help us make access with compassion and Grace I think for the humans around us I think sometimes we can see see our partners you know as Tiny humans right as opposed to the person who's right in front of me some time you know it's like that can shift something for us too and so I love that exercise and I invite people to S of remember that or to even consider like how does the perspective shift when you think about someone you care about or or someone you maybe are far away from even right now but you remember them as this tiny human so I leave you with that and I leave you with you know what I I had said this before but I'll of nail it back in patterns our unwanted patterns are Pain's way of grabbing for our attention I said it before pain is not out to get us it's not out to destroy us it's not out to ruin our lives pain just wants to be acknowledged it just wants to be honored it would like for us to just turn our heads back around for a moment right to be with it to witness it to grieve alongside of it so that we can actually make a pivot in our lives and move in the direction of the Rel relationships and you know the life that we really want to live and so I really invite people on you know this journey to look at the pain and to acknowledge it and to learn how to touch it in a way that is safe that is workable but allows us to be with it and get intimate with it in the way that it needs us to so that we can you know trailblaze forward in the way that we would like wonderful thank you so much Vienna thanks for having me

patterns are Pain&#39;s way of grabbing for our attention pain is not out to get us it&#39;s not out to destroy us it&#39;s not out to ruin our lives pain just wants to be acknowledged it just wants to be honored it would like for us to just turn our heads back around for a moment right to be with it to witness it to grieve along side of it so that we can actually make a pivot in our lives and move in the direction of the relationships and the life that we really want to live hey everyone before diving into the episode I want to take a moment to invite you into our mindbody green ecosystem where you can explore the infinite possibilities of health and well-being all you have to do is click the Subscribe button to hear more thought-provoking interviews with leaders in the health space I am so grateful for all of you who have tuned in over the years and let me tell you it&#39;s only going to get better you say our childhood wounds are playing out right now no matter how fantastic how average or in some cases how terrible our childhood was can we talk more about that yeah and and maybe not right now and in every moment but certainly in The Unwanted patterns that we can&#39;t shake and change and shift in our lives today and I think most people can probably raise their hands and say yep there are some unwanted patterns that I notice that no matter how much I commit to it no matter how much I promise myself that I&#39;m not going to do that thing again I&#39;m not going to keep pursuing emotionally unavailable people I promise I&#39;m never going to engage in this conflict in this way ever again because I don&#39;t like who I am when I do it or I&#39;m going to set this boundary you know with my partners parents or whatever it is but we cannot do it right it&#39;s like that to me is where there&#39;s an arrow that points to your resolution from the past when we can make changes fantastic right if you&#39;re like I can change this thing about myself and I implement it and you do great but when you find yourself back in that thing over and over and over again that&#39;s where we want to really inquire deeply uh and see what is unresolved from our past that&#39;s calling for our attention so you mentioned pursuing emotionally unavailable people is that a fairly common one it can be yes what what&#39;s what&#39;s the driver for that specifically oh it could be a number of different things um it&#39;s not so much about being attracted to someone who is emotionally unavailable it&#39;s about the pursuit and I remember when I distinguished this uh in maybe it was an Instagram re or something and I remember how many people were like wow that actually shifts and reframes it for me because this idea we we could be attracted to lots of people for lots of different things but it&#39;s this pursuit of I know that you are not available to me and I&#39;m going to see if I can what convince you otherwise I&#39;m going to see if I am good enough for this to for it to change your mind right and so a lot of times there&#39;s um sort of a worthiness wound that can play into the pursuit of going after someone who&#39;s unavailable um this idea you know a lot of people will say if you go after somebody who&#39;s unavailable it means that you&#39;re unavailable and that can be true H it certainly can be the case but some that was me 25 years ago right right it&#39;s like definitely valid point um but it can also be us feeling like we are you know undeserving of something that that&#39;s a part of the narrative that is just underlying it always and what we know is that if I&#39;m going to pursue this person I am going to continue to feel that way because I&#39;m not going to be able to convince them otherwise I know that they&#39;re disconnected from self or relationship and they don&#39;t want want anything but I&#39;m going to go after someone who&#39;s not available and it&#39;s going to keep this narrative steady for me and so there can be this worthiness element that that plays in that we keep uh yeah we sort of keep uh repeating um I think sometimes we can experience this space where it&#39;s like if you just get to know me then I&#39;m going to be able to convince you otherwise right and so sometimes people will will enter into that space hoping that with some time and if we yeah if we spend more time together and you get to see how great I am I&#39;m going to be able to change your mind right and so there&#39;s always this changing of the Mind element piece to it that can present and I think it&#39;s looking at like well who have you always wanted to change right like where where have you looked to before what&#39;s familiar about this where you&#39;re like wanting somebody&#39;s opinion or experience of you or the way that they relate to you to be different and maybe we might find some of that in childhood for example maybe we have a relationship with a parent or a sibling or another adult in our lives where they&#39;re disconnected from us we can&#39;t get the attention that we want from them we can&#39;t get the connection that we want from them we can&#39;t get their validation or you know intimacy from them in the way that we seek and yeah whether they&#39;re prioritizing other things they&#39;re busy they&#39;re just checked out for whatever reason but we&#39;re constantly in this Loop trying to be the star athlete or get the Straight A&#39;s or be quote unquote perfect so that we get the thing that we want from them and do we continue to chase that you know in our adult lives and you know romantic relationships or even friendships sometimes there&#39;s a lot to unpack there I think about performance culture you mentioned the straight A is the uh the star athlete I think of Dr Dr Lisa Miller&#39;s work around children in high earning very well-educated cities where there are studies to show that these kids in households where parents have significant resources kids go to the best schools are more likely to have anxiety or be depressed than kids who are in extreme like I was say poverty but like who who are far from well off where maybe parents are having difficult like those kids are happier and to me that&#39;s a big wow on one hand you have parents who are very involved educated resources producing children that are unhappy on the other hand you&#39;ve got kids in the other side you know the wrong side of the tracks if you will uh who don&#39;t have those resources who don&#39;t have the education and those kids are happier than these kids and a lot lot of it&#39;s how the parents interact and the expectations instead of how you know how are you feeling it&#39;s how do you do on that math test right how are you yeah what are you doing right how are you performing and yeah right that like the level of stress and pressure which you know tends to move kids out of being kids and you know getting to be playful and you know getting to exist in a low pressure space and that doesn&#39;t mean that they don&#39;t have wonderful outcomes of being smart hardworking individuals right but this idea that the thing that is most important to me as your parent is how you do in the world as opposed to who you are right and it&#39;s not to say that the parents on the other side of the tracks as you put it are necessarily inquiring about that but I think that that&#39;s so important like who are you and how are you right versus what are you doing essentially to make me happy less ashamed less embarrassed right because if you as child is a reflection of me is an extension of me holds some type of image of me right to my friends to my other family members to society to the world around me right if that&#39;s the thing that&#39;s most important is protecting the parents image then we understand how disconnected they&#39;re going to be from their children and their their child&#39;s internal experience right I think for a child then because performance is often tied to you know what I call worthiness wound this idea that I am only worthy right of H attachment connection love validation affirmation your presence peace in our family right if I am performing in the way that you need me to I get those things when I&#39;m doing that I don&#39;t get those things love connection intimacy Etc right when I&#39;m not doing those things right and so when we are in this performance space where we learn that the only way to get the things that we crave and desire and need as kiddos is to perform in the way that the adults in our lives require us to right it&#39;s we can see how easy it might be to either repeat that pattern or sometimes we take a path of opposition where we&#39;re like screw it I don&#39;t want to have anything to do with this because I can&#39;t stand this and then maybe we&#39;re a little bit um you know defiant in the other direction but it&#39;s a yeah it&#39;s a kids need to know that they&#39;re worthy just by being I want to come back to kids we&#39;ll park that and come back say I want to make sure we spend some time on in my view like the foundation of of your book which is excellent these these these core wounds so can you walk us through the five five core wounds what they are how they show up and ultimately how we can kind of start to do the work to move through them yeah so when I sat down to write the origins of you I was jotting down like all the different wounds that I thought that every human could possibly have and ultimately at the end of the day I felt felt that these five and and the the words that I chose right the language that I chose really Encompass The Human Experience don&#39;t think that we fit into boxes if a different word works for you as a listener beautiful go with that um but the five that really stood out to me were worthiness belonging prioritization safety and Trust meaning that through our lives in our experience right we tend to have ruptures in our sense of worthiness in a sense of belonging being a part of something in our sense of feeling like a priority in our sense of being able to trust the important people around us and the world around us um sometimes even being able to trust ourselves and then of course safety right am I safe am I secure um is my well-being being looked after right am I taking care of here and yeah the ruptures in that are things that we tend to find um happen in family of origin right in the family systems that we grow up in doesn&#39;t all happen there um in me kind of going through this I want to name how many people are like I think I have all five so if you&#39;re like resonating with many of these right now that&#39;s okay that&#39;s normal um but yeah sometimes a primary one is going to stand out where you&#39;re like wow I really do struggle with this I think at one time in our lives we&#39;ve probably experienced all of these things I think that the question becomes is what what shows up all the time like what&#39;s the consistent theme versus you know at one time I wasn&#39;t really feeling worthy or I couldn&#39;t find my tribe yeah no no no and this isn&#39;t about just sort of like a light scrape right this is about something that&#39;s internalized for us cuz we all of us have you know we can go through hard things and not every hard thing that we go through is going to stick with us and and change the trajectory of our lives right sometimes though hard things right and ruptures do do that and that&#39;s what&#39;s important for us to understand is like what in my story what in my experience things that have either happened to me or things that I have observed because not everything happens to us that impacts us right sometimes it&#39;s something that we see in our parents&#39; relationship or something that happened to our sibling that has a deep impact on us that we&#39;re looking out for as well right and so that&#39;s our job is to understand where there&#39;s a significant rupture in these things we don&#39;t have to make something out of nothing but we do have to name and acknowledge where there is unresolved pain in our lives so of those five which do you believe is the most common worthiness for sure I mean when I was writing about worthiness and like I am pretty sure every human on the planet probably rubs up against a worthiness wound at some point or another again to what degree is it something that holds you know the the reins in their lives okay that&#39;s we can argue right but it&#39;s like I think I&#39;ve done a I created a not this isn&#39;t scientific right but I created a a quiz what&#39;s your primary origin wound and and I think you know over 70% of people came back with the worthiness wound right so know that that&#39;s one that is so common absolutely need to link to that in the show notes so everyone listening can take the quiz what within the family system promote unworthiness give us some examples yeah so okay so one of the things that we started with already right is this need for performance so the Pleasers the perfectionists the performers out there right hands up those are a lot of the people who are going to struggle with a worthiness wound and it&#39;s what I was saying before right this idea that my line for connection closeness intimacy attachment validation affirmation peace Etc right is tied to my ability to perform it&#39;s tied to my ability to please you it&#39;s tied to my ability to present in whatever way you need me to in order to get the outcome that I&#39;m looking for so a lot of times we&#39;re going to see a worthiness wound develop because of that in the environment we can see a worthiness wound develop because of statements of harm and of course that&#39;s also tied to safety because we might be talking about abuse if we&#39;re talking about statements of harm but sometimes unfortunately we grow up in a family where we&#39;re told that we&#39;re worthless that we&#39;re told that we&#39;re not good that we&#39;re told that we&#39;re not deserving of anything that might feel extreme for some people but it&#39;s absolutely valid that you know so many of us have heard those words or a version of them before that strips it away from us right that strips our worth and our value as a human being down I quick Story one of the things that you know Str ruptured a little bit of worthiness For Me In conflict with my father the way that he would punish me was um by giving me the silent treatment and what would happen is when I was a quote unquote good girl he was super helpful super present super available really like happy to do anything for me but when I stepped out of that and you know when I say that it was really within reason I was a objectively you know good kid but when I was whatever defined in some way I didn&#39;t agree with him or you know wasn&#39;t you know able to he couldn&#39;t control me in a particular moment the way that I was punished was through silent treatment for sometimes you know days and weeks even on end and it was one of those things where I learned right like my worth like if I stay quiet if I am a agreeable if I am fine if I don&#39;t push back on things if I don&#39;t have boundaries right then I get connection and closeness and support and help but when I&#39;m not doing those things if I have a boundary if I have a thought that is different than yours and you don&#39;t like it right then I&#39;m going to be punished and all of that&#39;s going to be withheld from me right so that&#39;s another example right is like ooh I am worthy of closeness and connection and support and help when I fit in this box but when I don&#39;t fit in this box then it gets taken and withheld withdrawn so anecdotally I definitely know some people who have similar stories and H have done the work and kind of recognize this well former blind spot and then there are some people I know who are extraordinarily performan driven have expectations for themselves that are Beyond you know know ridiculous uh but they&#39;re just kind of hardwired that way they&#39;re extraordinarily competitive like there was there was as far as I know nothing traumatic in that sense in their childhood they were just kind of born hardwired very competitive very hard on themselves like expect excellence and that&#39;s just kind of who they who they are uh is that possible in your view yeah I mean I think I I love Excellence too and I love to compete as well and I think um you know there&#39;s a quote that a colleague of mine says which is that our gifts and our pain and wounds are oftentimes Nextdoor neighbors and you know the way that we learn to survive something often is in this really glistening and glimmering way and I think sometimes this idea and you know can we be born competitive like sure we certainly make an argument for that and obviously nature versus nurture etc etc but you know it&#39;s important for us I think to inquire right it&#39;s like if that&#39;s not there who am I if I&#39;m not pushing my right like who am I without it is there something there or is there nothing there so if unworth that that makes sense and I&#39;m curious if unworthiness is the one that&#39;s the most common what&#39;s the the most problematic yeah I don&#39;t know that you can rank that because I think the way that it&#39;s internalize and takes over any individual&#39;s life is is infinite right and it&#39;s and I think what I and it&#39;s something that I call in the book I call it wound comparison I think sometimes when we hierarchically are putting something like which one is the worst and who has it the worst to me that becomes a distraction actually a away from our own experience we can look at so many people&#39;s lives and objectively say holy smokes that person has been through it that is a story right but if that then means my story is not as bad as your story then what happens is it moves me away from honoring and acknowledging the way that my exp experience has taken up space and room in my life so if we take out the outlaw s if you will the people who&#39;ve had extreme trauma which you would hear a story and you would just winse like painful we take the outliers out and we go back to like maybe the the Middle where every living human beings experiened this the average in your view what separates the average from having issues that become obstacles in their ability to thrive as happy healthy human beings and those who have the same issues and they&#39;re all good I think to me it&#39;s about the resolution right for most of us and there might be some people listening who are like I really had a great go and there&#39;s nothing really that stands out and certainly there are cases where it is possible to have fantastic parents and you know to not have you know significant ruptures in your life so we can put those people aside but I think the the Difference Maker is those of us who are willing to look versus those of us who are not and I think that&#39;s what I&#39;m you know what I was saying at the beginning is yeah if you have unwanted patterns right if you&#39;re like H this thing that I keep doing or I keep finding myself in to me that lets me know that we haven&#39;t resolved what needs to be resolved does not mean that our past has to dictate our lives forever right it&#39;s that when most when when we are willing to acknowledge our pain when we are willing to actually spend a little bit of time with our story we don&#39;t have to hang out there forever right we don&#39;t have to go into the past and keep right but it&#39;s like if we&#39;re willing to acknowledge and honor the story then it loosens its grip on us I always think Pain&#39;s not out to destroy our lives it&#39;s not out to get us it&#39;s not cynically rubbing its hands together saying haaha let&#39;s see where I can destroy your life right it&#39;s like it&#39;s it wants to have us turn back around to it right because this idea that like when we&#39;re kids when we&#39;re teenagers we don&#39;t have great tools we survive our way through stuff we cope through whatever it is that&#39;s happening around us right we get to the other side congratulations we&#39;ve survived it great but then this idea of like I&#39;m going to go back there and we don&#39;t tend to do that and yet we still had the experience it still imprinted something upon us right and what I would say is that it might be dictating or directing parts of our Lives the way that we communicate the way that we navigate through conflict the ways that we do or do not set boundaries sometimes having too high of boundaries and not allowing people to get close to us or get connected to us right and those are the things that we have to look at so the difference right between the average the middle folks right who all went through similarish stuff it all kind of gets internalized in different ways but some people are doing better than others is that we&#39;re looking and naming and addressing and and touching the stuff from our past that has a grip on us you know where I go with this I agree with what you said is also mindset in my view there&#39;s a big difference between saying I think there&#39;s a process at least with me there there&#39;s a process where sometimes I will say you know why did this happen to me but then I will quickly segue to what can I learn from this versus some people just get stuck in why did this happen to me and then that becomes your story and we all have our stories everyone&#39;s got their story the reality I I think the the the real skill and it&#39;s a lifelong journey for myself and I think many listeners is like trying to create space sometimes from you and your journey and you and your story so to speak and and be self-aware and sometimes that&#39;s difficult to do yeah I agree with you 100% I think that curiosity is such an important tool and when we stay stuck in yeah whether it&#39;s a version of why did this happen to me or I can&#39;t believe this happened to me or I&#39;m so unlucky um when we get trapped in in a victim position and what I mean by that is not that we cannot be victims of course there are things that do happen to us we are victims of many things but when we get stuck there it&#39;s so hard to heal from that place right if we&#39;re clinging to a story right if we are holding on to it if we I we almost over identify with the story right then it&#39;s very hard to make any type of movement right so when you&#39;re talking about mindset absolutely right it&#39;s like there&#39;s got to be a space where we can inquire and get really curious about what can grow from this so to to segue off of this I&#39;ll provide something at least I find humorous one of my favorite on television was justified with the great actor Timothy elephant and there was a fantastic line which I&#39;ve used before in this show he says if you run into an [ __ ] in the morning you run into an [ __ ] if you run into [ __ ] all day you&#39;re the [ __ ] to me that kind of says it all so something else I thought was was really interesting birth order what do we need to know about birth order and I know you know there&#39;s some generalizations to be made but you know are there commonalities for the oldest youngest middle only only child uh what can you tell us about birth order as I think about my two children and how their personalities are so different and I&#39;m sure they anyone listening as a sibling or as children is thinking of the same thing and what about you where where are you in the are you an only child or you have siblings I&#39;m yeah raised only yeah yeah okay so I&#39;m an only child too um and it&#39;s a very unique uh there&#39;s not as many of us I guess I don&#39;t mean as many uh only children uh unique experience at times there are definitely commonalities that we can see I&#39;m a parent as well um and so I I even think about like oh my gosh the first time becoming a parent and how you do things and how you relate to your child and what you know how to do and what you don&#39;t know how to do and how careful you might be versus you know another one coming in you&#39;re like I&#39;ve been there done that and like where are we focusing I remember someone saying like I have like 7,000 photos of my first child and like three of my third you know and you&#39;re like right you sort of forget oh look this is the novelty of this and and and what&#39;s going on here and I what I maybe will point to is that I find it fascinating to understand what&#39;s happening in parents lives based on when that child is entering and so yeah we could sit here and say okay the does the first one have it hardest they&#39;re having to like crack through all the things and you know is the middle one the Forgotten one because we care about the first one and then the baby but the middle one is just kind of lost in the mix right like we we could chat all about that but I I I think there&#39;s something really fascinating and interesting about what is happening in the lives of the parents based on when children are entering and children are moving through and important moments in their lives because what we know for certain is like sure you know we both had the same parents right we all had the same parents and yet we all have or I I shouldn&#39;t say this all of the time but so many people I talk to is that we have very different experiences of these same adults right I have a very different take on my parents than my sibling does the way that my sibling would tell a story about my parents is very different the way that I would tell story about them and that piece to me is so interesting and fascinating because it shapes so much of the way that children internalize uh their experiences how much they&#39;re cared for how much a parent or parents prioritize them um what the focus is you know maybe if you had a young parent uh as the first child but then the third or fourth child has a more mature emotionally mature evolved parent because it&#39;s been 10 years time right it&#39;s like they&#39;re getting totally different experiences I think for parents listening one of the questions that I often ask people is to think about your child however old they are but let&#39;s say that their kiddo is smaller right now um and so like 15 20 years from now on their therapist&#39;s couch and when the therapist asks them tell me about your parents right what like what was like for you growing up um what&#39;s the good the the bad the not so good you know what are they going to say about you what right like what is the story that they carry and hold about their experience with you as their parent and if you like that answer great but if that answer is really confronting for you right it&#39;s like to me that&#39;s an very interesting inquiry I like that because it kind of zooms out to the big picture and for me personally as a parent sometimes when we start to talk about trauma and parenting I I will sit here and say oh God I did that one really wrong you know lost my temp you know and it&#39;s just like I think as parents you can you can be hard on yourselves but I think the reality is most parents are doing the best they can and are pretty darn good but I think when you start to talk about you know I think the world and and this is overall positive thing I think a decade ago we talked about trauma it was just big tea now we all know there little te little te is everywhere but like you can&#39;t escape it and I I just want to be clear to parents listening like none of us are perfect like it&#39;s long as as long as you&#39;re trying you love your kid you do the basics like you&#39;re doing fine because I think with a lot of parents you start to go down this rabbit hole and you&#39;re like oh God I&#39;m I&#39;m doing terrible what am you know no and that&#39;s it&#39;s it&#39;s the zoom out like you said right because it&#39;s it cannot be these micro moments of course I&#39;m the big believer like apologize take accountability take ownership like that is one of the best things that you can do as a parent but you have to zoom out and say the experience what&#39;s what&#39;s the story right because they&#39;re not going to talk to their therapist for you know 80 hours about how you were as a parent they&#39;re going to give a paragraph they&#39;re going to give a number of sentences about who you were where you showed up where you didn&#39;t and that&#39;s it&#39;s like that zoom out of overall what&#39;s the takeaway what will they say and that&#39;s the piece because it&#39;s the repetition that&#39;s why people say things right they&#39;re not gonna be like oh this one moment when you know you promised me ice cream but then we were late and we couldn&#39;t get ice cream you know like that&#39;s likely I mean maybe for somebody but likely not going to be the standout moment and the tell all so yes you cannot zoom in on these micro moments I love this and I want to close the loop on here with for our parents listening you know what are the big picture things we should focus on is one of them if I&#39;m hearing you correctly like if you feel like you&#39;ve maybe lost your temper apologize just like sorry I lost my it&#39;s a big it&#39;s GNA happen at least for me it&#39;s GNA happen but I say you know what I&#39;m I&#39;m sorry like I&#39;m really sorry I lost my cool I shouldn&#39;t have done that you know that&#39;s one thing I&#39;m getting for you like what are other things like for parents to like focus on other than like you know loving your child like being being there tell us what else hopefully you love your child hopefully you want to be there hopefully you want to show up for them right like let&#39;s let&#39;s have that as as beneath the bar but yeah exactly what I said before about apologize naming things right A lot of times what happens is shame or embarrassment or guilt comes in and when we do that most of us as humans we like to get away from that right we don&#39;t love the feeling of shame and embarrassment it sucks it doesn&#39;t feel good for us and so what happens is we hide right and so this idea of holding ourselves up high enough right to say I can make a mistake I can be human I can be flawed I can be imperfect right I just had an imperfect moment of course I did but that doesn&#39;t mean that I have to exist in my shame right because if I have to protect myself it means that I can&#39;t honor your experience if I have to protect myself I can&#39;t honor your experience I can&#39;t name what just happened because I&#39;m I&#39;m safeguarding me and as parents you know as the adults in the relationship I think it&#39;s so important for us to be able to work to a place really get to that emotional maturity where I don&#39;t need to safeguard myself I need to honor what just happened so yes the apology the ownership the accountabil accountability is beautiful parents say like you know what should I be doing right it&#39;s like your work is to continue to resolve that which is unresolved I know I keep saying it here but it&#39;s like the more that you do that right the more growth and expansion and healing that happens because we know that that your resolution from generation to generation does get past down right and so it&#39;s like what you don&#39;t resolve your CH children will have to face right what you don&#39;t resolve your children will have to face on that note what we don&#39;t resolve our partners and relationships are going to have to face so so let&#39;s go there like what what do you like where where should we start with relationships and and our experience It&#39;s Tricky right because it&#39;s like here&#39;s two people who are coming together who have complexity to them who have full stories right who have who grew up in family systems that may or may not have looked similar to one another right who have different storylines who have maybe different wounds or maybe some of the same wounds um but ultimately right like when we&#39;re in a relationship when there&#39;s an activation or trigger conflict or breakdown in communication what&#39;s happening is me as the individual is trying to protect something for myself right and same thing for the other side right and so when we go into that space where there&#39;s disconnect or rupture and relationships right it&#39;s like each person is safeguarding in the way that they know how sometimes that&#39;s learned behavior sometimes it&#39;s adaptive right it&#39;s like how did I need to protect myself growing up how do I need to protect myself in past relationships how do I need to protect myself here and you know a lot of times it&#39;s this race to needing to be right or needing to prove our point or just needing to protect ourselves right instead of racing to repair or hear the other person I&#39;ll share a quick story just because I think it helps synthesize this before I was married I was dating well spoiler alert we did get married so you&#39;ll know that this conflict didn&#39;t ruin everything but we got into a conflict while we were dating and I just kept doubling down tripling down I have no idea what we were fighting about but I remember myself like just needing to prove my point over and over and over again and Connor&#39;s like I got it I understand and I kept going and I kept going and I kept going I had this out of- body moment where I&#39;m like Vienna stop talking but I couldn&#39;t I just kept and finally it stopped and I remember this sort of the shame spiral coming on like like this was not very attractive and I I wonder if he&#39;s going to want to be with me anymore yeah and then I replaced the shame with curiosity quickly what does being right serve what does proving my point serve and I think this is a really important tool for anybody who&#39;s listening right is to ask what the behavior is serving because even though it might be dysfunctional or disconnected in the moment our behaviors in context make sense it&#39;s very important for us to remember you make sense with context your partner makes sense with context we all make sense with context context is not an excuse but it helps us make sense of things and so our behaviors our unwanted behaviors that were like oh I can&#39;t stand that I do this is protecting something it&#39;s serving something and your job is to understand and figure out what that is so when I inquired like why like what what is this all about brought me back to my childhood as you know already I&#39;m an only child my parents went through a nine-year divorce process nine nine year longest in the state of New Jersey at the time um talk about competitive and I watched a lot of manipulation a lot of gaslighting a lot of paranoia a lot of psychological abuse it was awful and as a little human in this system sort of observing what I saw was you know dominance power and control came from my dad who was very manipulative was a master gaslighter and my mom was in this weak position based on my perspective she was confused she was couldn&#39;t track what was going on and to me there was a weakness there it was very clear that safety wasn&#39;t being right right he was quick with his words he could always make himself right and not being right was unsafe and that perspective was so informative to me because I could have compassion for myself instead of just criticism and blame for like oh this was so gross I can&#39;t believe you behave this way it&#39;s so unattractive you can&#39;t show up in the world that way to oh I wow like of course you want to be right and need to prove your point because it is connected to your safety based on your life experience and now of course I can&#39;t just say I connected the dots and so here it it right like I cannot go around behaving that way for the rest of my life there has to be a shift that takes place but to understand what that behavior was serving offered a compassionate lens it gave I gave myself Grace and then it was this invitation to work with that part differently because yeah I I cannot do that in my partnership it&#39;s not going to work out very well it&#39;s not going to last if I keep doing that but I also have to have compassion and understanding for this part of my story that developed this Behavior to protect myself from something that did need protecting way back when wow so for a relationship to be successful there there there&#39;s a lot that goes into that and in my very unprofessional view I think it requires work and there needs to be growth but I also think in my oversimplification that like the biggest secret is picking the right person because if you pick the wrong person the amount of work acquired is possibly unsurmountable and that&#39;s so much of failed relationships comes down to like selection what&#39;s your I&#39;m not the professional no but I think you&#39;re you&#39;re right like there is so much to understand and unpack in individuals and in relationships and you know when you get together and you make a choice you know the closer the more intimate the more you understand about each other at that point right I think to to your point is like yeah it&#39;s going to be hard there&#39;s always going to be work there&#39;s going to be challenges you&#39;re going to face a lot of things throughout your relationship together incredible stages of life incredible moments of grief right but it&#39;s right it&#39;s like this idea you know the way that I described it I I felt with my husband that I believed that we could face anything together so on that note and again my professional overs simplistic view I believe and I I&#39;ve said this in years to to friends when there are like big problems in the early stages of relationships when there&#39;s no mortgage there&#39;s no kids there&#39;s no illness and like you&#39;re serious issues and like you&#39;re in therapy on week three my overs simplistic view has been like dude it&#39;s the wrong relationship like everything&#39;s okay right now to your point like life is going to be a lot more complicated and if you&#39;re having problems now like that&#39;s a that what&#39;s your what&#39;s your take on my oversimplification and potentially bad advice to friends decades ago no not I mean not necessarily right like I think yeah like if if there is high conflict there&#39;s so there&#39;s so much that&#39;s just always an issue right right from the get-go like likely that&#39;s going to continue right and I don&#39;t want to say all right because I think that there&#39;s people who have gone through hard stuff in the beginning of a relationship who have found their way through it right but I think this idea it&#39;s like when we choose Partnerships and and I mean not just like dating people for a few dates yeah there&#39;s that too um yeah right it&#39;s like when we have actually chosen a partnership um my take is that we have similar levels of your resolution we don&#39;t tend to choose people and partner with them again not go on a few dates with them but actually choose them and partner with them and have wildly different levels of your resolution now your stories might be entirely different somebody objectively might have a story that is the like oof the wincing like you said before and the other person might not have that story but a levels of your resolution why we choose each other right is we&#39;re still looking to resolve something there and I and so you know to your point right is couples who are willing and interested and curious and open about that work of resolving things through the dynamic right are going to do a little bit better than people who are like you just suck right or this is all you or I don&#39;t have anything you&#39;ve got it all or whatever it is right it&#39;s like or they&#39;re not interested in inquiring within or being self-reflective or they don&#39;t care about it or they&#39;re shut down from it it&#39;s very hard to make any type of movement and growth and change from that place and so this I don&#39;t care how unresolved you are I care how much you are open and interested in that work of resolution and knowing that so much of that comes through relationship our pain and our wounds that is at the hands of relationships so our healing a resolution is at the hands of relationships there&#39;s only so much that we can do in the vacuum of the individual right it&#39;s like our we know relationships hold up mirrors we know our partners do we know our children do right it&#39;s like that is where it&#39;s going to reflect the things back to us and I think you know the couples who do the best are the ones who are open to the exploration of self-inquiry and relational inquiry they&#39;re open they are reflective they are self and relationally aware and they can see their part and their partner can see their part and we&#39;re interested and committed to continuing to resolve and face the things that conf confront us so if those who are curious and committed and have learned to become effective communicators it sounds like those are the most common traits in couples that end up staying together and and having healthy happy relationships it is is it as simple as those who do not display those common traits end up being the couples that get divorced or is there more to the the failed the failed the qualities that that end relationships I mean there&#39;s a lot you know that that can go into the ending of a relationship but I do think what we&#39;re saying here in terms of like what allows people to get through hard things together life is hard and you know if it&#39;s not hard yet and I don&#39;t mean this to be Doom and Gloom but the reality of it is is that we Face loss and we Face grief and we fa you know we Face massive transitions throughout life we&#39;re going to get there at some point if you haven&#39;t had to walk that bridge yet and I think you know attachment when we think about it parent child is being able to move through hard things together and know that we&#39;re going to get to the other side it&#39;s the same relationally in Partnership right so this idea if you think like life is supposed to be just light and fun and easy and there&#39;s never going to be the heart right like that I think you know that expectation of it should just be this way versus this is what life is looking like right now and I trust and know that&#39;s why I said when I knew with my husband is like I know that we can face hard things together I&#39;ll go in a foxhole with him yes and that to me is one of the most important is not there will not be hard things or we have to avoid hard things it&#39;s that when the hard things present I know and trust that we will move through them together there&#39;s a lot that can end relationships right um and probably don&#39;t have enough time to get into you know all the different things that could happen there just to spend a moment you know I think communication is is a big one in having talk to a lot of experts like communication can erode quickly you know an example I I&#39;ll give an example of you know I think years ago you I would hear the the CL cliche advice you know never go to bed angry and I that&#39;s like terrible advice because if you&#39;re having conflict with your partner you are not going to bed yeah well do we really want to escalate this and go to 3 in the morning or 4 in the morning or or when emotions are running high like continue for them to to run high it&#39;s like no go to bed angry wake up and in my personal experience you always wake up in a much better space clearer head and like kind of resolves and oh that was that was [ __ ] that was silly my take is a lot it&#39;s never really the big thing that you know maybe the movies it&#39;s the little stuff yeah relationship killer resentment and how do we get to resentment oftentimes a lack of communication a lack of addressing some of the smaller hard things that are presenting um a lack of gratitude appreciation acknowledgement in the relationship resentment is a killer it&#39;s awful it&#39;s terrible how do we watch out for that well I think part of communication you know this there is um a term low negativity threshold I don&#39;t know if you&#39;ve heard it before no I haven&#39;t lnt yeah right uh and this idea sometimes people like you know don&#39;t make a mountain out of a molehill don&#39;t you know we only we pick and choose our battles and really what we see is that um those whose threshold is lower meaning I the amount of negativity or that I am willing to tolerate before I say something about it is really low okay very helpful and that&#39;s not like oh let&#39;s nag and you know be irritated andno I don&#39;t like the blue shirt that you have on I think you should have chosen a different blue right um it&#39;s right like when something is upsetting to me I don&#39;t hold it I don&#39;t let it store in my body I I share it and we don&#39;t have to make a huge to-do about it but we are able to express it and name it and have it essentially be resolved in that moment and when we have Partners who can say oh yeah okay I hear that sorry I really didn&#39;t I didn&#39;t mean for that to come out that way or um yeah I totally get why you experienced that way I&#39;m sorry and a kiss on the forehead and we move on from it right it&#39;s like that&#39;s you&#39;re right it&#39;s not sometimes the big stuff can be a significant rupture in the relationship but most of the time right these little things these little digs these little strips that happen repeatedly over time that get us to a place of resentment and disconnection and sometimes we cross a threshold where we are so resentful and so disconnected that it is so hard to try to come back from that and so this idea of bringing down your threshold from for what you&#39;re willing to tolerate you don&#39;t need to you know pound your chest and be proud I can tolerate so much is not something to be excited about don&#39;t walk around like that right and for many of us we had to learn how to tolerate a lot in our lives right in order to survive in order to get through something right so for people who have historically had to tolerate a lot in order to get by you really want to look out for this but this idea of Shifting especially in our interpersonal relationships to a place where we are not tolerating much right that&#39;s not meaning invitation for like blowout conflicts right but just a okay I need to share this with you oh I hear you yeah let&#39;s move it along right like I acknowledge yes yes yes and then we go like that is so so so important to help us to stay away from resentment and disconnection sound advice and you can very easily see how that can build over time and then lead to explosion yeah and so what what do you make you know I&#39;ve seen this happen to to people I know where all of a sudden it&#39;s you know we&#39;re getting separated or we&#39;re getting divorced you know we grew apart we&#39;re friends but you know we just grew apart what do you and again hard to generalize but what&#39;s your take on the we grew apart scenario yeah you know a few things right like the growing apart sometimes is the micro things that happen over and over and over again for a long period of time I think a lot of times I&#39;ll hear one person in the partnership who wants to keep growing who wants to do introspective work who wants to do healing work and the other person doesn&#39;t want to do that and so this idea of really growing apart is is is legitimate right this like one person is growing and wanting to change things and evolve and the other person sort of has the little horse blinders on and doesn&#39;t want to have those conversations or go there or explore that and so sometimes we you know depending on when we meet you know we we change as human beings right if you get together when you&#39;re 20 or you&#39;re 30 and then who you are at 50 60 right it&#39;s like it&#39;s different let&#39;s talk about that how much does age play a role I know there&#39;s statistics about this but I want your view on success in a relationship I think emotional maturity is you know the hope is that as we age although we know for certain that this is not correlated that you do not necessarily become wiser just because the number gets higher right so we know that that is not correlated and yet that&#39;s our goal right is our hope is um I I would like to be considered an elder at some point I would like to get to a place where there is a wisdom there that I embody um where there is just a continued ution of my you know emotional maturity year in year out and so I think I point much more towards a sense of emotional maturity as opposed to necessarily an age right a number uh in a person are there questions one could ask themselves to know if they&#39;re quote unquote ready for the the real the real thing um yeah I think think there&#39;s a lot of questions uh that we could probably ask ourselves and I think like who am I how well do I Know Myself and I know those are big questions and you know we&#39;re not static individuals we are ever changing always evolving always shifting always moving but I think there&#39;s something about like that sense of self do I know my story do I have I resolved anything in my life how am I still being driven by IR resolution from the past yeah I forgot what I was listening to I know it&#39;s was a podcast but I can&#39;t remember uh whose podcast it was and who the guest was but I remember them saying like you know if somebody&#39;s coming into the relationship and they&#39;re like and obviously this is dramatic but like I&#39;m perfect you know there&#39;s like you&#39;re going to be scared of that person but if you if somebody&#39;s coming into the relationship and they&#39;re like here&#39;s what I struggle with you know here&#39;s this thing that I know about myself that I have challenges with and I&#39;m working on it like that&#39;s someone that we probably trust more than the person who says I&#39;m perfect I&#39;m great there&#39;s nothing that I do that is you know right and so there&#39;s like a need for this self- understanding and I think an interest and curiosity in the understanding of you know the person that we&#39;re going to partner with as well like I want to get to know your inner world and I want to know my inner World self awareness is like Paramount I think with everything it&#39;s Paramount and I you know maybe it feels overused at this point but the reality of it is is that like it&#39;s it&#39;s vital for us to be able to move through relationships well you know it&#39;s like your wisdom your your emotional maturity can only come from you facing the parts of yourself that you don&#39;t like the parts of yourself that have been troubling in the past right it&#39;s like where do we gain our emotional maturity from by going through the fire where do we gain our wisdom from by going through the fire you don&#39;t get to have that just because you went from 20 to 40 or 60 right you&#39;ve got to face stuff right so what have you faced so other than buying the book which I will hold up everyone should buy the origins of you and taking your quiz which we will link to in the show notes what are some of the things that listeners can do right now to start becoming better people happier in in their own skin better in their relationships better human beings all around what what can we do to start to to work to do the work I think one of one great question is where in my life am I most reactive so sometimes we have to look in the corners that are a little bit trickier and harder for us so instead of like I&#39;m just going to express more gratitude moving forward which is a nice thing I think part of that inquiry is like where are there some trick tricky things in my life and I think reactivity is uh I consider it the neon sign the arrow that points us to your resolution where we are reactive with whom we are reactive right is going to point us to something that activates us it lets us know that something internally is going on for us that needs our attention so I&#39;d encourage everybody right now to think about where it is you&#39;re most reactive in your life and with whom and what do you know about that and what&#39;s familiar about that right and when I say familiar right it doesn&#39;t need to be like exact exact this is the sensation right what is familiar where have I experienced this before what do I know about this what is it that I don&#39;t feel prioritized in these moments is it that I don&#39;t feel good enough in these moments is it that I don&#39;t feel like I can trust in these moments right to really look for that so look for your reactivity okay look for where you can give advice but not take it yourself right oh we&#39;re so good at that right it&#39;s like where can you give advice but you cannot implement it yourself it&#39;s another really good indicator for your resolution around wounds um you know blowing things out of proportion kind of similar to reactivity but where it&#39;s like it doesn&#39;t kind of match what&#39;s happening reminder that you and your behavior make sense with context so if it doesn&#39;t match in the moment it matches to some moment even if it&#39;s not the one that just presented right um and yeah I you know one of the questions that a therapist once asked me that I continue to ask you know clients of mine to this day right is like what did you need most as a kiddo and not get and you know instead of brushing right by that question to just really sit into it to sink into it to give yourself a moment with it to really identify and acknowledge and again this isn&#39;t going on the hunt and you know I I say in the book like I really respect and honor you know parents and adults we&#39;re not here to throw anybody under the bus we&#39;re not here to you know just point blame and Sh you know any of that don&#39;t want to call hey Dad I&#39;ve got a problem with you that&#39;s not what this is about but it is also very important for us to acknowledge when there&#39;s something that we needed and we didn&#39;t get and to when we can name that we can sometimes see where that pattern plays out where am I still seeking that where am I maybe still not getting that today in my relationships and yeah that&#39;s a very important question that I think that we can answer right now in this moment too fantastic advice we covered a lot today is there anything we didn&#39;t touch on that you would like to touch on or any words of wisdom you&#39;d like to leave with our audience oh we did touch on a lot and you know there&#39;s so much more we could obviously dive into but I think you know there&#39;s um there&#39;s an exercise at the end of the book um fortunately it&#39;s not my exercise you know people who are like I wish I had written that song Or I wish I&#39;d made that movie I&#39;m like I wish I came up with this exercise but Michael Kerr psychotherapist um he says to think of your mother as your grandmother&#39;s daughter and see how that changes your perspective and I I love that invitation because again I will always remind people that context is is not an excuse we&#39;re never looking to make excuses for people but to remember that our parents and our partners and our neighbors and our friends and our colleagues and our bosses and whom right that everybody was a tiny human in a family system at one point and they went through complicated challenging things and we&#39;re not here to compare who story is worse and whose story is better but that yeah life is a challenge sometimes and there&#39;s cures and you know moments in there that we often know very little about and so when we can remember that each of us was a tiny human in this complicated system at some point before then I think there is a shift that can sometimes take place again that doesn&#39;t mean that we give the excuse and say oh okay well something hard happened for you so I understand why you did this thing to me but it does help us make access with compassion and Grace I think for the humans around us I think sometimes we can see see our partners you know as Tiny humans right as opposed to the person who&#39;s right in front of me some time you know it&#39;s like that can shift something for us too and so I love that exercise and I invite people to S of remember that or to even consider like how does the perspective shift when you think about someone you care about or or someone you maybe are far away from even right now but you remember them as this tiny human so I leave you with that and I leave you with you know what I I had said this before but I&#39;ll of nail it back in patterns our unwanted patterns are Pain&#39;s way of grabbing for our attention I said it before pain is not out to get us it&#39;s not out to destroy us it&#39;s not out to ruin our lives pain just wants to be acknowledged it just wants to be honored it would like for us to just turn our heads back around for a moment right to be with it to witness it to grieve alongside of it so that we can actually make a pivot in our lives and move in the direction of the Rel relationships and you know the life that we really want to live and so I really invite people on you know this journey to look at the pain and to acknowledge it and to learn how to touch it in a way that is safe that is workable but allows us to be with it and get intimate with it in the way that it needs us to so that we can you know trailblaze forward in the way that we would like wonderful thank you so much Vienna thanks for having me

Transcript for:Understanding and Addressing Pain and Childhood Wounds

Transcript for:
Understanding and Addressing Pain and Childhood Wounds